“Think before you speak. Read before you think.” -Fran Lebowitz

Repertoire Dogs

As the average Nevada unemployment rate climbs to just over 13 percent that’s all the more reason to differentiate yourself from the competition. By adding a handful of social media or networking skills to your repertoire, your positioning yourself ahead of the curve. “Knowledge” of social media/networking is completely different from using these tools strategically and tactically for branding, revenue generation, customer service, and so on. Start by researching and applying these measures to your own life by virtue of what the theoretical physicist Albert Einstein once said, “Information is not knowledge. The only source of knowledge is experience.” With in-depth experience and training in these fields at a personal level you’ll have no trouble adapting these skills for usage within a corporate setting, for example with the use of social media as an internal means of communication.

Here’s a blog post about the various ways a business should or may use social media. Going off this, I would like to touch upon the importance of a business using these mediums to monitor both the public perception of their brand and up to date information or news in their industry. Social media can be invaluable in these regards because it’s a free forum for assessment of your company directly from your client base and a collection of the best and brightest minds in a vast amount of industries. For instance, Twitter has somewhere around 175 million users worldwide constantly engaged in the exchange of opinions and news. By avoiding the inevitable inclusion of social media/networking into your life or business model you are doing yourself a nearsighted injustice.

There are a number of available online resources to educate oneself on the means and methods of manipulating social media or networking for yourself or business(check my blogroll for starters). But if you live in Nevada and are looking for something with a physical location, I suggest you check out the Nevada Microenterprise Initiative. An organization I was introduced to while attending the universities volunteer fair and provides a complete range of programs, and services to help you in starting or expanding a small business.